Lars Jan/Early Morning Opera

“I’m using the aquarium of Holoscenes to weave the unravelling story of water – the rising seas, melting glaciers, intensifying floods and droughts, into the patterns of the everyday. The ebb and flow of water and the resulting transfiguration of human behavior offers an elemental portrait of our collective myopia, persistence and, for better or worse, adaptation.”-Lars Jan

Holoscenes is a large-scale performance-installation that embodies the trauma of flooding. It is a visceral, crossdisciplinary project born out of the widely-shared concern that our troubled relationship to water will become the central issue of the 21st century.

Holoscenes activates public spaces with an elevator-sized aquarium filled and drained by a custom hydraulic system. Viewable from 360 degrees, it is inhabited by performers conducting everyday behaviors curated via a global open-call submission process—e.g. selling fruit, getting dressed, reading a paper, tuning a guitar. As water rises and falls the performer strives to continue: swimming to the top for air, diving down, and adapting to the new environment. Hydrophones allow audiences access to sounds inside the aquarium, which then become part of Holoscenes’ other-worldly soundscape.

Holoscenes weaves the unraveling story of water—the rising seas, melting glaciers, intensifying floods and droughts— into the patterns of the everyday. The ebb and flow of water and resulting transfiguration of human behavior offers a portrait of our collective myopia, persistence, and, for both better and worse, adaptation. Holoscenes’ impact is deepened by commentary from docents about climate disaster and human empathy, and a newsprint “broadsheet” with scientific statistics. Each presenting site is our partner in organizing public conversations that link local environmental concerns to Holoscenes, stimulating forward- and collaborative thinking around climate change and our relationship to water—and to one another.

Holoscenes is scheduled for installations in 2015 at Ringling Museum, Sarasota (spring), and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (fall).